


Magpies

by forpeaches (bluecarrot)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Married Life, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-29 00:54:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21146069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/forpeaches
Summary: Brienne has a secret.sequel to “say yes, damn you”, which is also mine.the two stand independently, i think.





	Magpies

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [say yes, damn you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20822612) by [wordtheef](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordtheef/pseuds/wordtheef). 

> written 22 October 2019.

Brienne held the plastic stick between her legs and peed on it, praying briefly.

She set it on the counter and set a timer. Fifteen minutes.

She had _fifteen minutes_ to remember every wicked thing she’d done in her life and weigh it against her painful, desperate hope. _Please_.

The pack of sweets she stole as a kid; getting into a fight and lying to her father about the marks on her hands; ripping up the aptitude test results that called her ignorant and unteachable and no social skills and suggested she’d be only good for marriage and breeding — using the cold dry words adults used when they think children can’t understand.

Brienne had seethed. She wasn’t _stupid_, she wouldn’t be kept in a kitchen. She was going to _do_ something.

Apparently that included crying alone on the toilet, trousers around her ankles and face in her hands.

She couldn’t tell Jaime.

She couldn’t tell anyone.

Get up, she told herself. Stop sniveling. You aren’t eight years old any more, you are twenty-three and married and — and as alone as she’d ever been in her life.

She rubbed her eyes.

The boy she’d fought as a child was three classes older and half a foot taller. Brienne hit him in the belly and then on the chin, splitting her knuckles open and standing over him like a lord while he lay in the mud.

The other children hadn’t cheered her on; they’d laughed instead. Laughed at both of them. _Beat up by a girl!_

Even the cause of the trouble, an underfed boy in hand-down clothes, didn’t want anything to do with her.

_That jerk won’t bother you again _she’d told him, hand stinging and pride blooming in her chest. _And if he does, I’ll take care of it._

He pulled away. _I don’t need a girl to help me! _he’d said — so she knocked him down too.

She regretted that now.

Nine minutes.

What would Jaime say?

Laugh, most likely. He never took anything seriously — isn’t that what Cersei said? _You asked her to marry you and didn’t even talk to me? You never think, Jaime, you never _think_._

And then the sound of skin on skin, a soft thump as someone’s shoulders hit the wall, a whispered _Yes_.

She looked at the test — still blank. (Seven minutes.)

He might take this seriously. He always wanted children, he had said once. Champagne glass in hand. Perhaps it had even been at their wedding.

Brienne caught the quick expression on Tyrion’s face before he wiped it politely blank, and it made her wonder about all those golden-haired nephews and nieces.

Oh, what difference would it make? Would it matter if Jaime had fathered no children or a dozen? A magpie raised no eggs of its own. He’d still want one with her.

Five minutes.

Brienne made herself stand, tug up her clothes, wash her hands mechanically.

Three minutes, three _goddamn_ minutes.

This problem was her fault really. She had been taking the pill and then she woke up one morning with a hangover and simply forgot, and that night Jaime loved her so sweet, so long, — and she slept late the next day and woke to find him hard and his hand nudging apart her legs, and they did it twice more, and —

Whatever he was, whomever else he fucked: she still wanted him.

Magpies, she thought, drying her hands on a towel — monogrammed, of course, and in that familiar Lannister red. The color made her faintly nauseated. No matter how old the heritage and beauty of Tarth, it never won out against gold mines and Casterly Rock — a name even Jaime spoke with some reverence.

What a cruel joke it would be to bring a child into this family. And the laugh would be on her most of all. _I’m going to do something with my life._

The alarm went off.

She didn’t look at the result, only wrapped the plastic in toilet paper and took it into the bedroom and held it out to her husband.

“I have a joke for you,” she told him, hand and voice shaking, “but I don’t know the punchline.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. my other account (wordtheef) is mostly smut.  
2\. this is my second fic referencing magpies  
3\. there is no #3.


End file.
